The Memory Cheats

Companion Chronicles #6.3

Released: 15 September 2011

Listened: 10/14/20

This is another Companion Chronicle read by Wendy Padbury, so Zoe has the focus, rather than Jamie. It’s also one of the connected ones where the frame story is almost as important as the flashback, if not moreso. Zoe tells her interrogator Kim this story, of when she, Jamie, and the Doctor land in a small village in Uzbekistan, shortly after the Russian Revolution, where the children are disappearing. The Doctor does his usual trick of letting the village believe he’s a government official sent to investigate, which works fine...until the official actually turns up. Zoe finds the official compelling, as well as his description of the new Soviet government. An idealized Communist system is what Zoe believes she was brought up in, so it appeals to her. Of course, what’s taken the children isn’t anything ordinary, but how that gets resolved is ambiguous. Zoe herself becomes an unreliable narrator, or maybe she’s pulling a Keyser Soze, or maybe she really doesn’t remember. It’s an unusual track for a Companion Chronicle to take, and it’s only possible because it’s part of a linked series of stories. That makes the story rather interesting.